To apply you need to attempt one skill assessment test as recruiter has attached skill assessment test with this job and wants to see your obtained marks,
So be carefull while attempting this skill assessment test

India's digital media & entertainment sector to see a transformative year in 2018

ET TECH | Posted By : Chatur Ranganathan|2 months ago |7 Views

ET TECH

With high-speed data connectivity finally becoming a reality in India, analysts are anticipating a transformation of sorts for Indiaâ€™s digital media and entertainment startup sector.

Their top predictions: a spate of consolidations among video-streaming platforms; more investments by international music apps here; and a pick-up in subscription-based and mobile advertising revenues.

Cheap 4G handsets and falling data prices led to a surge in data consumption on mobile devices last year, resulting in high user acquisitions for digital media and entertainment startups including video-streaming platforms and music-streaming apps.

â€œ(Over-the-top, or OTT) players like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hotstar will only get bigger,â€ said Jehil Thakkar, a partner at Deloitte India.

But â€œwith over a dozen players in the space, one can expect consolidation and a few players exiting in 2018. Also, heavy investments by the big players in original programming and regional content will take place as subscriptions grow.â€

In an interaction with ET in October, Greg Greeley, vice-president of Amazon Prime, said India had more people watching Amazon Prime videos during the first year of its launch here, as compared with the platformâ€™s launch year in other countries. The company hiked its annual subscription price from â‚¹499 to â‚¹999 recently.

As for international music-streaming apps, analysts expect Apple Music and Spotify will invest more in user acquisition in India this year. Last year, Apple Music hired former executive editor of Rolling Stone, Bobin James, as the editor of Apple Music, based in Delhi. Spotify hired Akshat Harbola as the head of its India operations.

â€œApple Music made small investments in the Indian market and indie artists in 2017. Spotify and others will look more closely at India as more users log on to music streaming apps from different parts of the country,â€ said the co-founder of a digital content platform, declining to be identified.

Analysts and entrepreneurs attribute the spurt in users across digital platforms to the entry of Reliance Jio, which disrupted the telecom industry with cheaper access to high-speed data and forced other telecom companies to follow suit with similar offers.

Gaurav Gandhi, the chief operating officer of Viacom 18 Digital Ventures, during an interaction last year said Jio and other telcos and the introduction of 4G data contributed to the surge in users, including for Viacom 18â€™s OTT platform Voot.

â€œWe have more than doubled our monthly active user base to more than 25 million users in the past six months, with the top 40 cities contributing close to 70% of the viewership,â€ said Gandhi. Also, more than 25% of digital media consumption came from regional language audiences, he said.

Similarly, according to music streaming app Gaana, the company saw a 3x growth in monthly active users during the second half of 2017 and contributes the growth to Jio and cheaper data prices.

â€œWe now have about 50 million monthly active users that stream close to 1.3 billion songs on a monthly basis, we have seen a huge growth last year and expect to see a growing amount of traction from tier-II and tier-III cities this year,â€ said Prashan Agarwal, COO of Gaana to ET. Gaana is part of Times Internet, a subsidiary of Bennett Coleman & Co (BCCL), the publisher of this newspaper.